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Novell kicks out SUSE Linux Enterprise 11

Getting Mono and getting high

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SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 runs on 32-bit x86, 64-bit x64, 64-bit Itanium, 64-bit Power, and mainframe processors. The kernel already supports IBM's Power6 processors and AMD's "Shanghai" quad-core Opterons as well as Intel's "Nehalem EP" Xeon chips expected next week. (Code freeze went into effect in January of this year, but luckily Nehalem was already long in the works). SLES 11 is priced on a per-server basis (not per core or per processor socket) and costs the same as SLES 10. That's $349 list price for 90 days of installation and a year of Web support; $1,499 for standard 9x5 business support; and $2,499 for 24x7 priority support.

The SUSE Linux Enterprise Mono Extension - SLEME, presumably? - includes Mono 2.4, which is compatible with Microsoft's .NET Framework 2.0 and has support for some of the features in the 3.5 version of the framework, including C# 3.0 and LINQ. The Mono Extension will require customers to buy a SLES license and then pay an additional $200 per server for x86 or x64 machines. On IBM's System z mainframes, the Mono Extension will cost $7,000 per Integrated Facility for Linux (IFL) mainframe engine. The Mono Extension is available today, but only for x86, x64, and mainframes. The code is not available on Power or Itanium platforms, which is a bit of a mystery.

The HA Extension high availability clustering software for SLES 11 will not be available until sometime during the second quarter of this year. The clustering extensions are based on the OCFS2 clustered file system contributed by Oracle to the open source community and also includes DRDB8 for block-level data replication between disk arrays and the cLVM2 cluster logical volume manager. The high availability clustering is based on the OpenAIS failover and application tool and the Pacemaker cluster resource manager, plus a slew of GUIs and support scripts that Novell has created to weave it all together.

Novell will include the HA Extension with all SLES 11 licenses for Power, Itanium, and mainframe servers, and when it starts shipping, the list price for support on the clustering extensions for x86 and x64 servers will be $699 per server. However, Novell is going to be giving it away for free to buyers using any SUSE Linux distro and with a paid support contract between now and May 31.

The desktop variant of SUSE Linux, Enterprise Desktop or SLED for short, is also coming out today too. It includes the OpenOffice 3.0 office suite and the Mozilla Firefox 3.0 browser, including Novell's support for Silverlight (through Novell's Moonlight project), Flash, Java, and smartcards. The latest tweaks to the Evolution email and calendar client, the Pidgin instant message client, and Banshee media player are in there too. SLED 11 costs the same as SLED 10, at $120 per seat with a single-client license and no volume discount.

Rex says that later this year, Novell will update its SUSE Linux Enterprise Real-Time Extension (formerly called SLERT) and SUSE Linux Enterprise Thin Client software with the new Linux stack. ®